Society's Child

They passed the USA PATRIOT Act - and I did nothing because I am a patriot.
They passed the USA Freedom Act - and I believe in freedom.
They nominated Hillary Clinton - and I voted for the lesser evil.
They declared medical martial law - and I didn't want to kill grandma.
They said to wear a facemask - and I passively obeyed.
I believe Joe Biden - because I am a liberal.
Ode to a Liberal - DWP

In 2010 Chris Hedges declared the liberal class as dead as a doornail. He was late. Liberalism had died decades earlier. All that remains now is the separate components of the body of liberalism. The stinking compounds have decomposed into identity politics.

The cause of death for the liberal class, as Chris Hedges tells us, was gullibility. Liberals were foolish enough to believe that they could moderate capitalism. They thought that they could change corporatism by elections, mass movements, whining and begging for incrementally.

The liberal class started their negotiations by compromising all of their ethics, beliefs, and powers. All they got in return were table-scraps to identity politics. The power elite did not give up anything it really cares about. The corporatists raped, pillaged and burned with abandon, while liberals wallowed in political correctness.

Comment: Well said. The contradictions within the liberal class are so numerous and obvious that it can be said that anything that it may have stood for, is completely gone, and now even symbolize the exact opposite of what they claim to be.

Remember the "yellow vests" movement that brought France to a standstill in late 2018? Now, Italy is seeing its own grassroots, anti-government, populist movement: the "Orange Vests" or "Gilet Arancioni."

Hundreds of protesters wearing orange vests or jackets gathered in Rome on Tuesday, chanting "Liberta'!" ("Liberty!") to protest the government's handling of the coronavirus crisis and calling for it to resign.

Described as a "rightist-libertarian" and "turbo populist" movement by the Italian media and modeling themselves on the yellow-vested anti-government movement seen in France, the leader of the Orange Vests, former Carabinieri Gen. Antonio Pappalardo, has said that the coronavirus pandemic did not exist.

"The pandemic does not exist, it's total bulls---," Pappalardo told a rally in Bari on Sunday, Italian news agency ANSA reported. "The coronavirus is not lethal, it only kills the already sick over 80s. Enough with the lies and falsehoods, you have terrified the Italian people."

The Lancet, one of the world's top medical journals, on Thursday retracted an influential studythat raised alarms about the safety of the experimental Covid-19 treatments chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine amid scrutiny of the data underlying the paper.

Just over an hour later, theNew England Journal of Medicineretracted a separate study, focused on blood pressure medications in Covid-19, that relied on data from the same company.

The retractions came at the request of the authors of the studies, published last month, who were not directly involved with the data collection and sources, the journals said.

"We can no longer vouch for the veracity of the primary data sources," Mandeep Mehra of Brigham and Women's Hospital, Frank Ruschitzka of University Hospital Zurich, and Amit Patel of University of Utah said in a statement issued by the Lancet."Due to this unfortunate development, the authors request that the paper be retracted."

New York Police Department officers policing the protests in New York City are increasingly covering their badge numbers with black bands, making it difficult for people to identify them and hold them accountable for their actions. On Wednesday, the National Lawyers Guild sent a letter to the department and to the city's corporation counsel, warning that if the NYPD doesn't put an end to the practice, it could expect a lawsuit.

"The trend of individual officers to sidestep what minimal accountability exists, in order to more effectively and with greater impunity brutalize protesters for pretextual reasons, is unacceptable."

The practice of police obscuring their badge numbers — a form of identification that many jurisdictions require officers to make available to the public when interacting — has taken on a heightened significance amid the nationwide protests over the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. The protests have been met with a show of force from officers, sometimes veering into brutality, leaving the risk that those without visible identification are acting with the very impunity to commit violence that spurred the protests in the first place.

The NYPD has strict regulations around displaying badge numbers — and a history of suppressing protests with violence and without accountability.

Comment: Note that this article was published March 21st, before the current situation in the US erupted, and that is fast spreading throughout the Western world.

What's happening around the globe is both new and old. While SARS-CoV-2 is new, pandemics and the effects of infectious disease are as old as mankind. And when we think about how to grapple with the situation in front of us, we should be looking to the past for guidance - because this is about far more than a pandemic, it's about humans. Specifically, human behavior.

One of the greatest challenges facing leaders today is determining just how to control the spread of a virus, while not having control over millions (globally billions) of autonomous individuals. Local, state, and federal government are having to make decisions daily (even hourly) about how many restrictions to place on the American people. And if you've been following the news, you know that states and cities are taking very different approaches. But as they consider strong restrictions and forced quarantines, it is important to look back at what has happened in the past when those in power place their constituents on lockdown.

Thirty-seven school children and two adults were injured after the security guard at a school in China went on a stabbing spree. A heartbreaking video of the incident shows kids as young as six covered in blood being rushed to the hospital.

As per local reports, the man, who is in his 50s went on a stabbing spree at around 8.30am at the Wangfu Town Central Primary School in the city of Wuzhou, Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.

A video of the incident shows young students, being rushed out of an ambulance soaked in blood. According to the police, in the knife attack, a total of 39 people were injured. Initial reports said that the condition of the school principal, a security guard, and a young student was critical.

The state of employment in the U.S. took centerstage Thursday when the U.S. Labor Department released its weekly jobless claims report.

An additional 1.877 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits in the week ending May 30, exceeding economists' estimates for 1.843 million initial jobless claims during the week. The prior week's figure was revised higher to 2.13 million from the previously reported 2.12 million.

This week's report marked the first time that weekly initial jobless claims came in below two million in 10 weeks. Over the past 11 weeks, more than 42 million Americans have filed for unemployment insurance.

After peaking in the week ending March 28, weekly jobless claims have been on a steady decline, but the pace of the decline might not be swift enough, according to economists.

"The downward trend is obviously good news, but in the context of an economy that is re-opening it is extremely high, especially when viewed against previous recessions. It may well be that businesses that had been trying to look after their staff and keep them on the payrolls have had to capitulate," ING Chief International Economist James Knightley wrote in a note Thursday.

"For example, social distancing constraints have made the business unviable or demand has not returned as hoped and they have been forced to adjust the numbers of staff to the new reality," Knightley added.

Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary has warned the new quarantine rules for UK arrivals is a 'shambles'

RYANAIR boss Michael O'Leary has hit out once again over the government's 14-day quarantine rules being enforced from next week, calling them a 'shambles'.

He also warned that they won't be enforced as it relies on passengers self-isolating without being monitored.

2Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary has warned the new quarantine rules for UK arrivals is a 'shambles'

Mr O'Leary, who has previously slammed the travel rules, told ITV yesterday: "It's been one shambles after another, of mismanagement, making it up as they go along, and the latest of which has been today's frankly shambolic announcement of an ineffective and useless quarantine."

He added: "People now have to fill in a form which the UK government hasn't even published yet."

Yesterday, the government announced that the new quarantine restrictions will start from June 8 and run for at least three weeks.

Comment: Meanwhile the rest of Europe are simply scrapping any idea of quarantine, that includes Italy which claimed to have been hardest hit. But, as noted above, none of it makes sense - and that's because this is political, not scientific, nor has it ever been about the health of the people.

For much of the world, lockdown feels like it has been going on forever. In Moscow, despite measures and restrictions easing off, Mayor Sergey Sobyanin believes it will take a year for everything to get back to normal.

In an interview with news agency TASS, Sobyanin explained that Muscovites will soon go back to their usual way of life once the pandemic is over.

"People tend to quickly forget the bad. That's how psychology works, thank God. I think that we will completely return to our previous way of life in a year," Sobyanin said. "How long we have to wear masks largely depends on the timing of a mass vaccine. According to various estimates, it will happen between October and February next year. I want to believe that we will receive the first large batches of the vaccine in October."

Comment: If weather had anything to do with transmission, why were most countries throughout Europe, enjoying an unseasonably warm and dry spring, on lockdown? With countryside walkers harassed by police drones? But then, as the Mayor said himself, he doesn't really understand the virus, which is all the more worrying because for someone so admittedly uninformed he seems rather eager to have the populace vaccinated with a rushed, experimental and potentially deadly vaccine: Engdahl: The warp speed push for coronavirus vaccines